About Joey Lauren Adams
Joey Lauren Adams (born January 9, 1968) is an American actress and director. She appeared in several Kevin Smith View Askewniverse films, including Chasing Amy, for which she was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress โ Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.
Joey was born in North Little Rock, Arkansas. Her father was a lumber yard owner. A former child actress, she eventually moved to Hollywood, CA to continue her career in 1988.
She had began her film career as a child actress in 1977 with a small part in Exorcist II: The Heretic. But it wasn't until 1993 that Adams' breakthrough role came, in Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused, a 1993 film which also starred Ben Affleck and Matthew McConaughey. That same year, she appeared in Bio Dome as Pauly Shore's environmentally-conscious girlfriend; and in Coneheads, as a boisterous teen gal pal of Connie Conehead.
She was in the film Mallrats, her first movie directed by Kevin Smith. She then received her first lead role, in Smith's 1997 film Chasing Amy, opposite Ben Affleck. Adams received a great deal of attention for her portrayal of Alyssa Jones, a lesbian who falls for a man (Affleck). Smith wrote as well as directed the film, which was largely inspired by his relationship with Adams herself.
Adams' performance in "Amy" earned her both the 1997 Chicago Film Critics Award and Las Vegas Film Critics Society Award for "Most Promising Actress," and a Golden Globe nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion PictureโComedy/Musical. Adams also contributed the song "Alive" to the soundtrack of Chasing Amy, writing it and performing it in one of the scenes of the film. She also appeared briefly in Smith's 2001 work, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, reprising the role of Alyssa Jones. Later, she reprised the role, in voice form only, for Clerks: The Lost Scene, featured on the Clerks X DVD.
After having the female lead in the successful 1999 Adam Sandler film, Big Daddy, she would go on to appear in many smaller films, including A Cool, Dry Place, Beautiful and In the Shadows. She also appeared in two episodes of the FOX TV sitcom series Married...with Children, in the role of Mona Mullins in the episode "Top of the Heap", which served as a pilot for the two MWC short-lived spinoff series Top of the Heap and later Vinnie & Bobby, and as Janey, the buxom, blonde fiancee of Bud Bundy's Cousin Jimmy in the MWC episode "The Wedding Show".
A veteran actress who has appeared in more than 30 films, Adams' most prominent roles were as Layla Maloney in Big Daddy and the Kevin Smith-directed Chasing Amy